planned the caverns, the lake villages, the mounds, the dolmens?  When a country passes from polished stone to bronze, is it the same people changing implements, or is it a new people come on the scene?  When one thinks one has found the solution, a new discovery often confounds the archaeologists.  It was thought that the Celts originated the dolmens, but these have been found in sections which could never have been traversed by Celts.

=What has been determined.=—­Three conclusions, however, seem certain: 

  1.—­Man has lived long on the earth, familiar as he was with the
  mammoth and the cave-bear; he lived at least as early as the
  geological period known as the Quaternary.

2.—­Man has emerged from the savage state to civilized life; he has gradually perfected his tools and his ornaments from the awkward axe of flint and the necklace of bears’ teeth to iron swords and jewels of gold.  The roughest instruments are the oldest.

  3.—­Man has made more and more rapid progress.  Each age has been
  shorter than its predecessor.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] It originated especially with French, Swiss, and scholars.

[2] According to Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, N.Y., 1890, p. 212) the reindeer was not known to the Second Stone Age.—­Ed.

CHAPTER II

HISTORY AND THE RECORDS

HISTORY

=Legends.=—­The most ancient records of people and their doings are transmitted by oral tradition.  They are recited long before they are written down and are much mixed with fable.  The Greeks told how their heroes of the oldest times had exterminated monsters, fought with giants, and battled against the gods.  The Romans had Romulus nourished by a wolf and raised to heaven.  Almost all peoples relate such stories of their infancy.  But no confidence is to be placed in these legends.

=History.=—­History has its true beginning only with authentic accounts, that is to say, accounts written by men who were well informed.  This moment is not the same with all peoples.  The history of Egypt commences more than 3,000 years before Christ; that of the Greeks ascends scarcely to 800 years before Christ; Germany has had a history only since the first century of our era; Russia dates back only to the ninth century; certain savage tribes even yet have no history.

=Great Divisions of History.=—­The history of civilization begins with the oldest civilized people and continues to the present time.  Antiquity is the most remote period, Modern Times the era in which we live.

=Ancient History.=—­Ancient History begins with the oldest known nations, the Egyptians and Chaldeans (about 3,000 years before our era), and surveys the peoples of the Orient, the Hindoos, Persians, Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, and last of all the Romans.  It terminates about the fifth century A.D., when the Roman empire of the west is extinguished.